


Yancy

by MayAChance



Category: Pacific Rim (2013), Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Depression, Gipsy Danger - Freeform, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Knifehead (Pacific Rim) - Freeform, Not A Fix-It, Post-Canon, Post-Knifehead (Pacific Rim), Post-Operation Pitfall (Pacific Rim), Raleigh Becket's Missing Years, trigger warning, trigger warning: suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-06-30 22:00:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15760542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayAChance/pseuds/MayAChance
Summary: Raleigh Becket, Post-Pitfall, in a final letter to Mako, as he looks back on Knifehead and his missing years.





	Yancy

**Author's Note:**

> To clarify, there is a TRIGGER WARNING attached to this fic. If implied/referenced suicide or depression may trigger you, please turn around now.
> 
> This is not intended to be a suggestion on how to live you life. I DO NOT support taking one's own life in response to hard times. This is fiction, and sometimes a better story is where the characters die, as is explained wonderfully in this post: http://neverreallythoughtaboutthefuture.tumblr.com/post/172106229337/anyone-can-fall
> 
> This can be read as either gen or Raleigh/Mako. Your choice. I was thinking of it as gen, but it can definitely be read either way.

It’s different in the books.

I’d always read that you heard the heart  monitor  first, and then opened your sandy eyes and looked to the side, and the person you loved most was there  .  Dozing,  probably  , because they’d been so worried about you that they’d exhausted themselves .

You’d say, “Hey there,” and your voice would be rough and  crackly  and speaking would hurt; they would wake up, and then smile, and say your name, in a voice that tells you they weren’t sure you would make it .

That’s not what happened to me.

Waking up hurt.

Not because of the phantom throb of my lost limb, or the stabbing pain in my shoulder, but because of the ache in my soul.

It’s not something I can explain.

It’s like…

You know that feeling of a fresh burn? When you bump your arm into the pan, or bump against the side of the oven while grabbing something?  That’s what it felt like, not only tracing my fresh circuitry burns, but like a brand  was pressed  against my heart and brain  . The burning encompassed me  entirely  . It hurt too much to move, and there was nothing to  be done  that could numb the pain.

I love you, you know that Mako? You’re not him, and that’s okay. You’re Mako.

I’ll always miss Yancy, but you make it hurt less. It scares me, ‘cause no one’s ever done that before.

Tendo tried, my God did he try.

When you two were rebuilding Lady, did he ever tell you about what happened when I woke up?

At first they didn’t realize I had woken up yet. I’d been in a coma for a couple weeks already then. They weren’t sure that I’d ever woken up, so I guess it makes sense. The longer you’re in a coma, the less likely you are to wake up, and your chances drop fast.

I guess my heartrate gave me away or something; it hurt too much for me to move, so I was  just  lying there waiting for them to notice .

Tendo noticed of course he did. Good ol’ Tendo.

There I was, laying there with my eyes open and not moving because it felt like I would fall apart, and he looked at me with that look in his eyes - you know the one, where he’s  practically  saying, “You’re such an idiot,” - and he  just  said, “I should  probably  call your doctor .”

He  totally  should have, but he didn’t;  just  sat with me until I could ask the question.

I think  I already knew the answer. Of course I did. We ghost drifted all the goddamn time. He wasn’t in my head, and if he wasn’t in my head he wasn’t anywhere.

You’d think that being the only person in your head would make your brain quiet, make it easier to concentrate.

That’s the opposite of true.

Being alone in your head makes it loud.

It’s like chasing the RABIT with no way to get out. It’s reliving your every memory. Every happy memory stings like a thousand needles to the heart because you’ll never have that back.

My favourite memory was always meeting Lady. Getting introduced to your Jaeger is special. He and I, we spent the entire night in there,  just  staring at her. The Lady Danger, we named her. In that lighting, she looked like an angel of death. God, we got so much shit for that name from the press. It wasn’t there place to judge, but they did.

Anyways, that was the memory that haunted my dreams. Lady was dead and gone, or so I thought. Even if he were still with me, we’d have never looked at her like that again. He wasn’t still with me.

That made everything worse.

I mean,  obviously  it did.

I’ve never felt anything that hurt worse than losing him did, and I spent four years on the front lines of the Kaiju War. We went through a lot of hurt in the early days.

Kaori and Duc, Tamsin, the guys from Diablo.

When we took on Yamarashi with Romeo, we lost a whole spotter crew. I thought that losing them would be the hardest thing that ever happened to me, and how wrong I was.

Losing him hurt more than anything else in the world, and all I could do was lie there and relive our happiest memories, knowing that we would never laugh together or even see each other again .

I guess you kind of get it. Your parents, and all that. But losing a drift partner is different.

We lost our mom to cancer right before K-Day. It felt like everything was over, but in the end life moved forwards. Without the drift, I never moved forwards, because part of me had died  just  as my brother had. The part of me that  was left  behind wasn’t the good part, the part that could fight through and win.  The part of me that  was left  behind was the part of me who  was scared  , and alone, and unable to keep fighting when he would have . It wasn’t like that after my mom died, or after the spotter crew, the Blue Delta.

Mako, you’re the only thing that’s ever made it hurt less. I don’t know how you did it, but you did. It scares me. I can’t help but feel like I’m abandoning him whenever I realize that, but the truth is, you’re not helping enough.

It’s not your fault. You’re doing everything you can. It’s nice to have someone wake me up from my nightmares.

But Mako, I don’t think I can deal with this anymore.

Every moment of everyday, I’m in so much pain I can hardly breathe. My brain doesn’t work right anymore, so everything is foggy all the time. I’m numb but still in so much pain and I’m scared. I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t scared.

I always hated  being scared . Hated it more when he was.

I have to go. I’m sorry.

I love you.

You’ve been there for me. That’s more than anyone else has done, no matter how hard they’ve tried. This isn’t your fault.

Do something for me, yeah?

Make sure the world doesn’t get destroyed again.

I love you.

…

_Yancy?_


End file.
